Seasons in the Sun
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: A song fic based on the classic by Westlife: Jerome Eugene Morrow struggles with the shadows of his past as he takes a decisive step regarding his future


+J.M.J.+  
"Seasons In The Sun"  
  
by "Matrix Refugee"  
  
Author's Note:  
At last! The first of the long anticipated song-fics. Bear with me, I listen to old music on the radio when I'm writing my fics, and this one was playing when I was drafting the last chapter of "Flesh of My Flesh." I was familiar with this one already, but had never really listened to the words...but I did, and it sounded so much like Jerome (Eugene)'s back story that I jotted down a few ideas for a song fic. Well, I'll let it speak for itself.  
  
Disclaimer:  
I do not own the movie Gattaca, its characters, concepts (including jargon), or other indicia which are the property of Sony Pictures, Andrew Niccol, et al. Nor do I own the lyrics to the song "Seasons in the Sun", which belong to the 1970's group Westlife, or to whomever wrote it (which I have not been able to find out. Whoever you are, I love you. Don't sue me.)  
  
  
Five in the morning. Jerome Morrow blotted the ink on the last of the notes he'd handwritten, the old-fashioned way. One for his mother. One for his father. One for Papa, his father's father...one for Ambrose, which he was tempted to post when he went out, but decided against it. He didn't have to be the first to know.  
  
"Goodbye to you my trusted friend   
We've known each other since we were nine or ten   
Together we've climbed hills and trees   
Learned of love and ABC's   
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees."   
  
Ambrose Mulger...Thye'd known each other since first form, when they were just kids in knee pants. The short, stocky, blonde-haired lad and the tall slender dark-haired one. Ambrose was a Valid second class, all health problems erased and some adjustments of appearance, but nothing major. Jerome's father had been concerned aobut their associating, at first, but Ambrose came from a good family, well-placed in society. Of course, none of this had mattered to the two boys. They'd been like brothers, inseperable. They'd studied together, hiked together in the hills of Oxfordshire, they'd been on the Mansford Gentlemen's Seminary swimming team together--Jerome was the far better swimmer, but Ambrose had a wonderful sense of confidence and cheerfulness, always content with whatever score he got.  
  
"It ain't about winning, Jerry; it's about goin' out there and doing' your level best," Ambrose always said when Jerome told him he should try harder, be more competitive.  
  
Jerome gritted his teeth, putting those thoughts aside. The square, red leather presentation case on the upper left corner of his desktop seemed to taunt him soundlessly. Ambrose would have been amazed and delighted just to get on the podium. He wouldn't have cared what color the medal was, but there again, he wasn't perfect...  
  
"Goodbye my friend it's hard to die   
When all the birds are singing in the sky   
Now that spring is in the air   
Pretty girls are everywhere   
Think of me and I'll be there."   
  
Birds chirped in the treetops outside his bedroom window. A memory flashed through his mind: When they were in Oxford University together and he'd have to drag Ambrose off the mattress first thing in the morning so they wouldn't be late for practise. Ambrose's tendency toward prowling the campus late at night, looking for pretty co-eds, made him the despair of O'Faolin, the master of the swimming team: "Whaye cantcher keep dacent hours loike Morrow, boy?" But Ambrose always had some effusive apology that managed to melt O'Faolin's seemingly steely heart.  
  
But once in a while, Jerome would join Ambrose on these amorous forays. Only trouble then, the girls would forget Ambrose even existed when they spotted him with that tall, athleticly slim creature with the raven hair and the penetrating blue-green eyes. Ambrose didn't mind. "You need a nice girl of your own to loosen you up, Jerry-boy. That hoity-toity manner of yours'll be the death of you someday," he always said.  
  
"We had joy, we had fun   
We had seasons in the sun   
But the hills that we climbed   
Were just seasons out of time."   
  
He glanced out the window. The pale gold in the eastern sky was just warming the crests of the hills against the horizon. No time for sentimentality. He had a task to do. No time to waste on recalling the past.  
  
"Goodbye Papa please pray for me   
I was the black sheep of the family   
You tried to teach me right from wrong   
Too much wine and too much song   
Wonder how I got along."   
  
He had to maintain an air of normalcy...He proofread the letter to Malloran, "Papa": corrected a punctuation error, then folded the letter and slipped it into the envelope and put it with the rest of the letters in a drawer of the desk.  
  
Papa... Jerome had been the old man's favorite grandchild, and it had nothing to do with the lengths Jerome's parents had gone to in order to Validate their son. The old man, with his papery voice and the warm, adult smell of pipe tobacco and brandy that always hovered about him like an aura, had loved Jerome because he needed to be loved. His wise words of advice and comfort had always tempered Jerome's father's strictness. "You're too hard on that boy," he'd always say when Father got to stern with him. "You'll make him think he can't do anything right."  
  
He always had the feeling the old man had never thought much of Jerome's being Validated, but he never heard Papa say anything outright about it. Except he always corrected Jerome for using the term "DeGenerate" or "InValid" for a person whose genetics hadn't been corrected. He tried to share his Catholic faith with his grandson, but he didn't hold it against Jerome when it didn't take root.  
  
"God doesn't see Valids or InValids: He just see the people He made," Papa always said. "He lets us have imperfections for a reason: to keep us humble."  
  
One thing he'd learned from Papa: troubles were a lot easier to swallow with a glass of liquor.  
  
"Goodbye Papa it's hard to die   
When all the birds are singing in the sky   
Now that the spring is in the air   
Little children everywhere   
When you see them, I'll be there."   
  
He went to the washroom to get ready, put a normal face on it. Anything to make it look like what it wasn't. Don't let them suspect, until someone found the envelopes tucked away in the desk drawer.  
  
For some reason, an image passed through his mind's eye: Papa carrying a four-year old Jerome on his shoulders. He swatted it away. He had other grandchildren, even great-grandchildren now. They could take the place of the black sheep, the perfect one who couldn't swim a perfect score to save his life. Let their innocence cancel out the disappointment.  
  
"We had joy, we had fun   
We had seasons in the sun   
But the wine and the song   
Like the seasons have all gone."   
  
As he got his breakfast, he eyed the bottle of vodka hidden in the back of the refrigerator. No, had to keep a completely clear head with this. Make it look like an accident, an act of God, not the blunder of someone who'd had one.  
  
"Goodbye Michelle my little one   
You gave me love and helped me find the sun   
And every time that I was down   
You would always come around   
And get my feet back on the ground."   
  
As he backed his Jag out of its space in the garage under the apartment complex, he realized he'd forgotten to write a letter to his cousin Michelle. He almost stopped and went back to write it. No, spare her little heart the pain. Her health had never been strong and it was a miracle she'd lived as long as she had with all the problems she had.  
  
He could see her face, with its too-large jaw and her crinkly, almost Asian eyes, not pretty by the world's standards, but the one face that made his cynical heart sing. No, best that she especially think that her cousin Jerome had simply had something bad happen to him. Don't let her know he'd done the unthinkable.  
  
He refocussed, backed the car out and pulled out toward the light. A nod from the night watchman going off duty and he pulled out onto the quiet street.  
  
Michelle might have been an utter genetic embarassment to Jerome's parents, but the fact that the rest of the family--with the exception of her parents and Papa--weren't sure what to do with her only made her all the more attractive to Jerome. She went to all his swim meets and always cheered the loudest. No matter what his score, she always bear-hugged him around the waist when he rejoined the family group after the meet.  
  
She'd had pneumonia when he'd been at the Olmpics in Naples last year. He knew she'd wanted to be there. Maybe that was why he failed so miserably. The race horse who hadn't run the course because his small friend the donkey who shared his stall wasn't there the day of the race...  
  
"Goodbye Michelle it's hard to die   
When all the birds are singing in the sky   
Now that the spring is in the air   
With the flowers everywhere   
I wish that we could both be there."  
  
He drove past the gardens at the center of the village, one of Michelle's favorite places to visit whenever her family, Mum's brother Carlton and his wife Sarafine came to visit. She'd always walk among the flowers, touching the blossoms with gentle fingertips. She had a garden of her own at home; somehow this awkward little girl (She'd been born a week after him, but her condition caught her in a freezeframe so that she had the heart of a seven year old in a body that looked like a pudgy pre-teenager's even though she was twenty-seven) could coax the most beautiful flowers from the stubborn, rocky soil around her family's home...  
  
He ground his teeth. The last face he wanted to have hovering in his mind's eye...Michelle's serene face, eyes closed, as she lay with her head in his lap, asleep, innocent, as they rode back from a family trip to the seaside when they were both seventeen.  
  
"We had joy, we had fun   
We had seasons in the sun   
But the stars we could reach  
Were just starfish on the beach."  
  
He reached the spot on the road through the hills, at a dangerous curve. A lot of drivers had been clipped here, trying to change tyres or attending to other emergencies. The police wouldn't take much notice in yet another unfortunate occurance...  
  
He pulled over by the roadside and got out. From the trunk, he took out a board with some nails sticking out of the end of it and laid it on the road. He got back into the car, backed up several hundred yards and drove over the board. The nails punctured the right front tyre quite nicely--POW! flap-flap-flap-flap. He pulled over and got out to change the tyre.  
  
An image passed through his head: Michelle on the beach picking up beached sea stars after a storm and throwing them back into the water.  
  
He shook himself, went on with his task, making sure he was too close to the road.  
  
Another image: Michelle and he sitting in the summer house in his parents' back garden, just a year ago.  
  
"Jerome, can I ask you a question? A big question?" she asked.  
  
"Of course," he said.  
  
"Can we get married?" she asked.  
  
He was accustomed to her artless way of putting things, but the very subject of the question put him off. But he hardly had to give it much thought. "I'm sorry, Michelle...but we can't."  
  
She looked up at him, her small dark eyes puzzled. "Why can't we?" she asked.  
  
He didn't know how to explain it to her so she could understand. England had laws forbidding "genoming", discriminating against people on account of their genome, but he knew of Valids married to InValids who still had trouble. He knew one couple that had ended up divorcing under very nasty circumstances. Much as he loved Michelle, with her extra chomosome and the defects it had caused to her brain, she just wasn't marriageable. Even if he had wanted this for them, they--she and he--couldn't marry without incurring the wrath of society, and of his father.  
  
"People wouldn't understand it if we did," he said.  
  
She looked at him innocently. "But we love each other. They would understand people loving each other."  
  
It pained his heart to disappoint her. "I love you, Michelle. But I couldn't love you as a man loves a woman."  
  
"You don't?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Could you love me that way?"  
  
He'd hated to deny her that joy, but he'd only be stringing her along, and that wouldn't be right. "No, I couldn't. It's not your fault...we have a very special friendship, and...if we were to love each other the way grown men and women do, it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be as special."  
  
Her eyes had started to fill with tears. "Why?"  
  
"It's hard to explain."  
  
Her sad face hovered in his mind's eye as a car approached, taking the curve too fast. He clenched his eyes to banish her image as he stepped back into the road, into his fate... 


End file.
